Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and orientalist. He wrote his letters in French and signed Louis. He is best known for rediscovering the ruins of the city of Petra in Jordan. During h...

Ferdinand VII was twice King of Spain: in 1808 and again from 1813 to his death. He was known to his supporters as "the Desired" (el Deseado) and to his detractors as the "Felon King" (el Rey Felón). After being overthrown by Napoleon in 18...

Marie Antoine Carême known as "The King of Chefs, and the Chef of Kings" was an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as haute cuisine, the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery favored...

William Fraser was a British India civil servant who was an Agent to the Governor General of India and Commissioner of the Delhi Territory during the reign of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. His bungalow, a low domed structu...

At the time he became 12th President of the United States (1849-1850), Zachary Taylor was the most popular man in America, a hero of the Mexican-American War. However, at a time when Americans were confronting the explosive issue of slavery...

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725. His parents, both actors, wanted him to become a priest, but their hopes were dashed when, at sixteen, he was expelled from the seminary for immoral misconduct. Probably best-known for his reputa...

Shuja Shah Durrani (also known as Shah Shujah, Shoja Shah, Shujah al-Mulk) was ruler of the Durrani Empire from 1803 to 1809. He then ruled from 1839 until his death in 1842. Shuja Shah was of the Sadozai line of the Abdali group of Pashtun...

Lin Zexu, courtesy name Yuanfu, was a Chinese scholar and official of the Qing dynasty. He is most recognized for his conduct and his constant position on the "moral high ground" in his fight, as a "shepherd" of his people, against the o...

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques) was a French American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in t...

The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together specialized in collecting and publishing folklore during the 19th centur...

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law (linguistics), the co-author with his brother Wilhelm of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch,...

Sir William Jackson Hooker was an English systematic botanist and organiser, and botanical illustrator. He held the post of Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow University, and was Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He enjoyed the...

Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist. He is famous for the novel The Betrothed (orig.Italian: I Promessi Sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature. The novel is also a symbol...

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst, Freiherr von Weber was a German composer, conductor, pianist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romantic school. Weber's works, especially his operas Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon gr...

General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to ru...